Parametric Resonance of Hopf Bifurcation

We investigate the dynamics of a system consisting of a simple, harmonic oscillator with small nonlinearity, small damping and small parametric forcing in the neighborhood of 2:1 resonance. We assume that the unforced system exhibits the birth of a stable limit cycle as the damping changes sign from positive to negative (a supercritical Hopf bifurcation). Using perturbation methods and numerical integration, we investigate the changes which occur in long-time behavior as the damping parameter is varied. We show that for large positive damping, the origin is stable, whereas for large negative damping a quasiperiodic behavior occurs. These two steady states are connected by a complicated series of bifurcations which occur as the damping is varied.